Nice. I wonder why the reviewer uses a Halcro preamp with his BHK 250. I bet he will experience a shocking improvement when using a BHK pre.
And too bad the reviewer uses a Esoteric E-03 phono stage for comparison. We all know the SPP can outperform phonos that cost twice as much. It would be interesting if it can compete with 3 or 4 times the cost which I think it might, like maybe the Esoteric E-02. Now that would be one heck of a review.
Perhaps it was @Brodric in disguise 
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I just bought a Ortofon MC A95 will the stellar work with that low of an output?
Yup. Should be fine with most anything. I’ve used a 0.4v Soundsmith and 0.6v Lyra Delos, and there’s plenty of gain and adjustability. It is very revealing of the cart, which can go either way. The A95 should be awesome🤠
Thanks Beef, I have followed this thread but have not really looked at the design what makes this preamp different? Over the last few years I have had a lot of phono preamps finally settling on the Modwright PH9.0 because of the tubes sound but it does not have the the right sut it is only 1:5 so I have to turn up my BHK to 70 to have adequate volume
I’m not qualified to say what makes it different from other pres. It is not a tube pre, though the voicing is toward an accurate yet “analog” sound. Though some would say there’s nothing wrong with the BHK at 70. Or 80.
Thats fine I remeber reading in the thread earlier about the LED’s which I thought was part of the gain stage kind of like the how Tortuga uses in their preamps, I am going to borrow a SUT first also but I was trying to get away from using one and another set of ic’s
There is absolutely nothing wrong with turning up the volume.
The fear of setting the volume over 25% or so is one of the reasons so much rock and other pop music is heavily compressed. The average listener thinks there is something wrong if they need to turn up the volume appreciably to obtain a good listening level.
Ehhh, kinda/sorta. I’d thought it had more to do with the “first impression” of the first few seconds of a song. Same volume, the compressed track will sound louder/have more “punch”. If you got a song in front of a label guy, he’d pick the one that “jumps out of the speakers” and says “radio-ready” (back from the Olden Days of Radio).
If you turn up the volume (most people don’t want to bother with that) of an “uncompressed” song, it will sound different than that song, compressed and at the same volume. So its not just about volume. Just as a quiet source turned up to 80 on the BHK will sound different than a source that only requires a pre volume of 25. Though most of us here would argue that the former is worse and the latter, better.
Now, a generation has gown up with all forms of compression, and a lot of people actually LIKE the sound of it. Hot area in HW and SW plugins, compressors. This is not to say that engineers were not using compression prior to that, as you well know. This is maybe more about buss compression - squashing the whole mix. As audiophiles, we’re in a small minority who oppose it in principle.
This is the beginning of master bus compression, indeed.
Now all pop is compressed, plus broadcast uses additional compression, so no song jumps out as it did decades ago.
I have found when providing a new client with a CD of their last concert they will often fuss it is not loud enough as I typically do not use any compression. I need to explain they need to simply turn up the volume if they want louder. 
I find it is important to normalize the overall signal to as loud as possible (I place peaks at -0.3dBfs).
Fortunately, classical listeners are accustomed to little or no compression and they are much more comfortable with my recordings.
It is all in educating the consumer.
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As I am not an average listener, been doing this for over 40 years, I have generally thought that the volume control should typically be around 50 to 70% of its range for normal listening levels, this is has also been recognized by the designers I have talked to about this albeit based on active gain stages.
I do feel especially with vinyl if you are at that high of level in the preamp stage it can be leaner sounding on a vinyl rig, its all about matching cartridge output to the phono preamps capability.
Classical is different and also greater dynamic range I have demonstrated my system to people playing classical music and they will say why is it so quiet and I would respond just wait to the crescendo and boom they are surprised
Well, good luck with that!
I often find classical recordings do a DR thing that doesn’t reflect reality. If you attend a concert (assuming reasonably good hearing), you rarely, if ever think either, “I can’t hear this part” or “That’s TOO loud”. But it happens all the time with high dynamic range recordings.
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I have had excellent success educating/explaining dynamic range and compression to the musicians I record for - they get it.
It is not uncommon for the most dramatic parts of a classical piece to sound too loud in reproduction because of the lack of context in the home. In the hall, a full orchestra wide open makes Grand Funk Railroad sound like the Tooterville Trolley, easily reaching 120dB+. There is a reason many conductors and classical musicians have hearing loss. At home, life-like levels are overwhelming.
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I’m gonna take a wild guess that you didn’t see GFR . But of course we’re not talking about overall maximum levels, but dynamic range of the entire “program material”. Limiting it to Rock bands, yeah - their “quiet” is a classical “f” at least.
“WE’RE AN AMERICAN BAND!!!” 
I took classical piano lessons when I was a teen from a guy in my hometown who was into this sorta stuff:
He had massive forearms.
The reason I thought of this classical piano teacher, was he 'splained to me the significance of the title of the GFR tune “T.N.U.C.”
As a teen, that was pretty cool. As culturally inapropriate as it is now. But hey- we were from Michigan.
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Actually, the peak levels of a rock concert and a full orchestra both approach ~120dB.
(Some brass and percussion instruments reach 130dB to 140dB near field. This is why there are often transparent sound deflectors in front of the brass and percussion to protect the hearing of the wind players.)
But rock concerts are a bigger problem for hearing in the short term as their overall sustained volume is greater. That is, while the peaks are the same the orchestra quickly backs off, while the rock concert typically remains at least loud.
Yup -sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Thank God🤘🏻
What dB do you guys count as noise level at such a concert?
I guess having trumpets in my back in the school Bigband might have caused a slight dip if anything near 140 dB is valid 